(BNSF issued the following news release on January 25.)
FORT WORTH, Texas — The BNSF Railway Company (BNSF) announced today that it has launched a $17.5 million track and bridge maintenance project on its main line between Fresno and Richmond, Calif.
To minimize the impact on customers and communities, work that could have been spread across many months will be completed in a two-week period between January 23rd and February 8th across this 194-mile subdivision. This is one of the larger BNSF maintenance projects that will be accomplished in such a compressed time frame.
According to Steve Anderson, General Director Line Maintenance, “the maintenance blitz allows BNSF to perform a large volume of track upgrades in a compressed time which will improve ride quality for Amtrak and facilitate freight movement between Fresno and Richmond.”
The Stockton blitz project includes upgrades to four bridges, improving 25 at grade crossings, the installation of 69,638 wood crossties and undercutting (drainage improved) 23,232 feet of track.
To achieve the compressed schedule for the project, BNSF will bring in 300 additional employees from various parts of the railroad that will be assigned to specific track, rail and bridge renewal projects across the line.
BNSF plans to close the line and perform maintenance six hours a day. Customers have been notified about any temporary changes in their freight schedules.
Some highway-rail grade crossings along this rail line will be closed temporarily as maintenance crews reconstruct track. In most cases, an affected crossing will only be closed a few hours on a particular day. BNSF has worked closely with all the communities to plan crossing closure schedules and identify alternate routes for traffic.
Command centers will be situated in Fresno, Merced and Stockton where BNSF personnel will be stationed around the clock.
A subsidiary of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (NYSE: BNI – News), BNSF Railway operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America, with 32,000 route miles covering 28 states and two Canadian provinces. BNSF is an industry leader in Web-enabling a variety of customer transactions at http://www.bnsf.com . The railway is among the world’s top transporters of intermodal traffic, moves more grain than any other American railroad, transports the mineral components of many of the products we depend on daily, and hauls enough coal to generate about 10 percent of the electricity produced in the United States.